190 



Monthly Review of Literature. 



[FEB. 



learning that for the present, at least, his 

 visible existence among men is suspended, 

 that his infant son is king, that Scotland 

 weeps her king departed, her nobles slain, 

 and treasury exhausted, he girds himself in 

 good earnest for a season of travel with 

 the mighty wizard, and forth they go 

 accompanied always by the Brownie, and, 

 after a time, joined by a fair lady, one El- 

 -fricla ; Elfrida and the Brownie, by their 

 natural gaiety, their love of nuts, flowers, 

 children, sunshine, and music, cast a gleam 

 of hilarity over the dismal and monotonous 

 journey, which all four are pursuing. 



Sir Michael, like Merlin, is a combatant 

 for the good cause, against the kingdoms 

 and powers of darkness. He has mate- 

 rially enfeebled Satan's earthly dominion ; 

 and acquired a direct and indefinite con- 

 trol over the fiends themselves, and, of 

 course, over all who worked by their effi- 

 cacy. Our travellers visit the fairy realms, 

 the infernal world, regions allotted to 

 the Great Unborn numerous countries of 

 the earth discovered and undiscovered 

 the paths below the ocean, and the ap- 

 proaches of paradise itself. As the tra- 

 vellers linger round the limits assigned to 

 the yet uncreated shadows, an opportunity 

 is given of tracing the coming events of 

 two centuries, as they appertain to the na- 

 tions in general, and our own island in 

 particular ; and those characters and those 

 achievements, which have filled the mind 

 of the enthusiastic author with admiration, 

 are eulogized in the form of prophecy a 

 great deal of splendid imagination, of 

 honest feeling, and of devotion to the 

 cause of liberty, being plentifully poured 

 forth from a fountain of fire and fancy, 

 apparently exhaustless. Every chapter, 

 indeed, teems with poetic power ; but the 

 book wearies, nevertheless, beyond de- 

 scription and endurance. The kingdom of 

 shadows, the more shadowy it is, and the 

 more effectually its representation is unlike 

 our chequered earth of realities of love, 

 hate, hope, fear, want, plenty, hunger, 

 thirst, winter and summer, night and morn- 

 ing, home and native land, the more 

 deeply oppressive do human bosoms feel 

 the necessity for withdrawing the thoughts 

 long together from these the very essences 

 of existence, and more especially painful 

 is it, when, added to such compulsory ab- 

 straction from the living and tangible 

 world, those realms of fiction to which we 

 are forced away, are industriously repre- 

 sented as visual illusion altogether which 

 a spell can create a spell dissolve, 



But not to forget the travellers all the 

 beauty and all the goodness that appear, 1 

 turn out mere illusion no host entertains 

 them hospitably no fair damsel captivates 

 Sir James's eyes no celestially apparalled 

 youth, brilliant as morning, steps before 

 them no honied voice breathes inviting 

 accents on their ears, but Sir Michael, ap- 

 prehensive of James's inability to resist 



allurement, lays open unseen deformity 

 and disguised evil ; from the youth's 

 golden locks falling upon the fairest tem- 

 ples, horns spring up, and the eternal 

 cloven foot peeps out of purple sandals ; 

 the lovely maiden, who in the realms of 

 waters would detain Sir James a willing 

 and permanent captive, is compelled by 

 the wizard's mighty word, to unfurl a tail, 

 stretching miles beyond her better half; 

 hate, treachery, and ruinous spells, lie in 

 their path, and in their cup and these the 

 most disastrous when that sparkles the 

 brightest, till the spirit of the reader 

 longs for flesh and blood again, and the 

 vicissitudes of common life. 



To trace out any distinct account of 

 their journeyings to hell, paradise, or fairy- 

 land, is utterly impracticable from the 

 great similarity of all and each of these 

 several dominions the most magnificent 

 descriptions being lavished upon some fa- 

 voured portions of even the lower empire, 

 and the eternal weight of gloom, of which 

 we complain, and which we feel so heavily, 

 pervading and following their steps to the 

 regions intended to represent the most ex- 

 alted happiness. An inconsistency too, 

 with regard to the tenants of these various 

 sojourns, is constantly pressing upon us, 

 and as glaring an absence of every thing 

 like system of government and unity of pur- 

 pose as in the heathen mythology itself. 

 Good and bad seem promiscuously hud- 

 dled together, wherever they go ; in hell, 

 some arrived at the last stage of purifica- 

 tion ; and the gates of heaven besieged by 

 fat monks and scarlet popes the supreme 

 aversion of Mr. Allan Cunningham who 

 were kicked down again for their pains. 

 The monks, indeed, fill the infernal worlds 

 by thousands ; and to popery and its con- 

 trol over the human mind, are ascribed 

 all the power of satan, and every evil pas- 

 sion over which he sways. 



The book is tedious, we repeat, to a most 

 mortal degree attributable mainly, we 

 think, to the want of individuality in the 

 circumstances and scenery, and to the 

 constant inflation and wordiness of the 

 style. The Arabian Nights' themselves do 

 not present speeches more full of inanity 

 and repetition ; while there we do find 

 something tangible to rest our hopes and 

 fears upon. Here all is vague ; every cir- 

 cumstance is one of a class, and spoken 

 of under a general appellation ; im- 

 mense seas rolled around ; eternal snows 

 stretched out on every side to a distance 

 illimitable ; walls of ice, coeval with crea- 

 tion, rose perpendicularly ; cities of masts 

 sprung up ; cities themselves, with their 

 lowers, and minarets, and domes, lay along 

 immeasurable coasts ; nations, still name- 

 less, flourished and spread their millions 

 over trackless deserts, converting forests 

 to fertility ; night and her stars ; day and 

 his sparkling sun ; spring and its flowers ; 

 forests, plains, lakes of ink, of fire, of 



